Half-Moons
by Catri Howlman-Carthaki spy
Summary: In a sideways universe where Vulcan and Earth became enemies instead of allies, Nyota shares love through dead languages and hopeless plans. Scotty takes her as she is. Sc/U AU


**Title:** Half-Moons  
**Fandom:** ST:XI  
**Rating:** R  
**Pairing: **Scotty/Uhura  
**Warnings:** slavery, au, dystopia, mostly exposition  
**Notes: **for the h/c bingo prompt "slavery". One moment I have nothing to do with that square, and the next I couldn't get the idea out of my head. Expectations of quality should be checked at the door. First posted on DW/LJ.

**Summary: **In a sideways universe where Vulcan and Earth became enemies instead of allies, Nyota shares love through dead languages and hopeless plans. Scotty takes her as she is.

* * *

Right before the fleet locks onto them, before they're beamed off the ragged shuttle and into separate holding cells, Nyota grabs Scotty's right arm with her left, holds their joined hands up so they both can see.

"One soul, two bodies. We'll never be apart."

She kisses him as hard as she can. She can still feel him, even when the warmth of his body is replaced with cold air.

She rubs the skin of her arm. Circle, dot, circle-in-circle. Two bodies, one soul.

She'll find him again.

* * *

She isn't supposed to meet him. This is the restricted section, the place where freedom ends and slavery begins. The Tellerites are willing to pay for her services now, but one toe out of line and they'll keep her and their money both.

She needs to get away, away from the sneers, the eyes that touch her when the hands cannot, the whispers of low-class overpriced that follow her around.

She sneaks to the lower levels.

She finds him behind a boiler, where he too is breaking the rules, a bunch of contraband tools at his feet that he's using to break another slave's shackles.

The two stare at her.

She clears her throat. "There's a recycler leaving in ten minutes. They keep the cargo bay pressurized."

The shackles hit the deck with a large clang.

He pats his friend's back. "You heard her; stay safe, Keenser."

He's got an accent. Those can be hard to find out here. Maybe he came all the way from Earth; maybe he was a debtor, or a traitor.

He introduces himself as Montgomery Scott.

After that first meeting it's a blur of excuses made to find each other. He doesn't ask about her gloves, and she doesn't ask how he ended up here, why there's the silver glint of a silencer on his neck.

It's a mystery, a human with an earth accent on a Tellerite base, but it's not what keeps her coming back. She slips through the shadows and she creeps through walls, and she does it because Scotty's wonderful.

He thinks she's beautiful. He goes on and on about her legs in that thick accent, and he tells her about the station. He knows every bolt and pipe and gear, and he could destroy this place. Instead, he gathers scraps, and he builds a still.

Sometimes he cuts a bolt here, opens a lock there. Sometimes, he leads her into the spaces between the walls where only the maintenance slaves go. Sometimes, he is hers.

She's never sure how it starts, but she knows what she feels. She's never been blind to her feelings.

She tells him she loves him a hundred times, breathes it into his mouth and draws it onto his skin and he never answers.

Until he kisses her, and she tells him in English.

"How much is your bond?" she asks him, a ticking clock in the back of her mind.

It's more than she can afford, but she knows how to move the numbers around. How many times has she done it as part of her job, as a matter of course to please her superiors?

Just this once, she works the system to her advantage.

One day, the Tellerites manage to get a glimpse of her ungloved hands. She loses her job.

It will be hell finding another, but none of that matters.

What matters is that when she walks onto the outgoing shuttle, she's holding Scotty's hand.

She works enough jobs to keep herself out of debtor's prison. She eventually saves enough money to buy the Monty.

It's a dinky freighter that can't reach half impulse, but when Scotty sees it his eyes light up.

With the ship, it doesn't matter that they can't afford both docking fees and board. So long as the ship's alive, they can go anywhere. They are free.

Her mother would have loved it.

Scotty spends his days in the engine room, holding the ship together, trying to ease it to warp two. At night, when they share the captain's quarters, he comes to hear smelling of sweat and grease.

He doesn't mention the datafile listing him as the owner of the ship, but she knows he appreciates it.

She draws patterns in the grime on his shoulder. A circle inside a circle. A half moon. Three small dots.

"What do they mean?"

"It means I love you. It means we're never going to be apart."

He sighs. She can feel him thinking.

"That was a close shave yesterday," he says. "Ye drove the old girl curst hard."

Nyota hums. "You know, in some ancient cultures, slave could own other slaves? I found that out when I was researching bond law."

She looks at Scotty and waits.

He doesn't disappoint.

Hikaru Sulu is their first purchase. He was scheduled for termination for "insubordination" and "incurable hostility". They make the purchase in Scotty's name.

There's no legal means of freeing a slave in the Coalition of Star Fleets. There's a loophole where some debtors are able to purchase themselves, but it's hard to achieve. There are groups made of up entirely of slaves who own each other in hopes of protecting themselves.

Hikaru Sulu is not involved in any such group.

But he's smart, and he's willing, and when he's safely on the Monty and hears their plan, he grins like a shark.

"Happy to be aboard," he says, and salutes. "Which one of you should I call captain?"

Keenser joins them the old fashioned way, as a "free" citizen, and they pick up Giotto and Riley at the same time. They grow in fits and starts until they're a crew of twenty. Then one man buys his wife, and a woman buys her sister, and another buys the father of her unborn child.

They turn an old storage closet into a rec-room, and the old rec into a nursery.

Nyota walks to the bridge surrounded by the sounds of families, and she thinks of the border again.

The border between the Vulcan controlled United Federtion of Planets and the Coalition of Star Fleets is an actual border, a force field put in place by the Vulcans that runs up for an infinity, and across to the place where Federation space and Klingon space meet.

To cut down on the number of people killing themselves by throwing their ships at the field in search of an edge, the Vulcans started allowing brief gaps.

A temporary lapse of the force field still technically honors the terms of the ceasefire. It's still a mess, but at least a hundred ships make it through every time. Sometimes it's a hundred thousand. Once it was a million.

It's better than nothing.

"How many times?" Scotty asks. "How many times did ye throw yerself at that force field?"

Nyota rubs the back of her hands. "You haven't counted?"

"I wanted y' to tell me."

"Forty-seven" she says.

He hisses, like it's him who has forty seven brands on his fingers. He's had worse; hell, _she's_ had worse. But he rubs her fingers like he can rub out the sting, and she can't help but kiss him.

He takes the border idea seriously.

"We'll have to ferret out the coordinates of the next breech," he says, like it isn't a stupid idea, like they wouldn't be risking everything they'd built. "We cannae do it with this lass, I'm sorry to say."

Nyota sucks her teeth while she thinks.

"I speak most of the Starfleet languages," she says. "I may be able to run a con."

"Steal a ship?"

"Not a ship, a shuttle." She shrugged. "We need one; it'd be more plausible. You know how hard they can be to find. We steal a third hand last-gen shuttle and fly into broadcast range."

"Ye can pick up the coordinates at the border?" Scotty says. He sounds incredulous.

"Sure, if you can find the frequency. Sometimes the coordinates they broadcast lead you to a drop point. It varies. Last year was a clusterfuck, so they'll be less secretive. People usually back off after a bad year."

Scotty doesn't ask for details; he doesn't need to. It's always a bloodbath, and if you survive the crush and the race to beat the two minute warning, you get scooped up by the Fleet.

Then you get a brand. She's seen brands on children as young as two.

Because Nyota owns him, Scotty won't face much in the way of legal consequences. At most he'll be detained a week for being an accessory to theft. The crew won't be in legal trouble at all. They'll set up a job before they do, something so clean it squeaks. At most, there'll be an audit, but Nyota doubts there'll be more than a cursory inspection.

Most of the investigative power is focused on sniffing out traitors. A handful of thieves will barely merit a closer look.

Scotty draws a half moon on her cheek, a soft smile on his face. Nyota returns the gesture.

"There's something I want to do before we go," she says.

"And what would that be?"

"I want to marry you. I want something permanent, something they'll have to pry from my body."

It's a dead language. Not many people even remember it. It means so much to Nyota, especially now that she shares it with him. She draws the shapes on his arm. Two open circles. Two small dots. A circle inside a circle.

"They can't separate us," Scotty says.

They get the tattoos together. Circle, dot, circle-in-circle. After, when Scotty's buried himself in the Monty's engine with no company but liquor and his own thoughts, Nyota goes back to the tiny tattoo parlor, and has a sentence travel down her spine.

It's one promise kept, and another made.

She thinks of her mother and father, a poor man and a wealthy slave. She wonders what they'd think of Scotty. She hopes they'd approve.

* * *

She doesn't stay on the penal colony long. They don't bother, when it's something as small as shuttlecraft theft. She gets another brand, this time on her left shoulder, to show she's don't time in a Starfleet prison. Then they dump her on a space station.

It's easy to run a con when you speak the right languages.

She wears gloves to hide the barcodes, and make-up to hide the scars. All she needs now is a weapon and a ride, and well…those are easy to come by.

She's not going to change the system; she's not sure there's anyone who can. She just wants to be out, to be with Scotty in a place where both of them could be free.

It's live free or die, with your ancestors always looking down on you.

If she's got Scotty, she's fine.

They'll never be apart.


End file.
